Promotion is key when working freelance, if you don’t put your work out there and make contact with potential clients, who will? Aiming to be working within freelance illustration, i understand that this is something i have to make happen solely based on my skills at using social media and physical promotional materials aswell as the work itself. Thankfully in our modern age self promotion has become much more instant and covers more ground due to social media.

On “Business of Illustration.com” there was an article suggesting sending out regular “mailers” to art directors and potential clients. Although quite traditional i like this idea because i have found that emails are particularly easy to brush over or ignore, but receiving physical mail is becoming much rarer and i think more likely to catch the attention of those who receive mail in an office to their “in” trays. The mailer suggested by this website is a standard postcard, 3-4 times a year to keep art directors and clients up to date with where your work is going, i think this idea would work because they could potentially see the image on your postcard and stick it on their notice board or mood boards and provide inspiration on their own projects, which may encourage them to use you in projects and commissions. Although i like the idea of sending out a postcard that is double sided so that you can showcase more work, maybe with something witty on it because it might help it be memorable 🙂 below are some examples of mailers that illustrators send out:

these ones above are from an illustration agency, so they show a variety of different illustrators work.

I am now going to look into other methods of self promotion 🙂 both physical portfolios and online portfolios